Bedtime Story
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Sometimes saving the Doctor takes a subtle approach. Melody Pond hears a story from her personal guard.


Bedtime Story

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Doctor Who

Copyright: BBC

Melody Pond woke up breathless, half-smothered by her blanket, her two small hearts pounding in her ears. She knew better than to scream – first, because no one had ever come to help her; more recently, because the person who did come seemed to have a sixth sense about these things, and didn't need to hear her.

"Bad dream again?" Private Oswald enquired softly, the door zipping closed behind her as she approached Melody's bed. "Computer, lights."

She dragged the plain metal desk chair over to the plain metal bed, as she often did, and sat down. Her brown hair was falling out of its regulation bun; her wide hazel eyes shone down at Melody with concern. Such behavior was not, technically, forbidden, but they did share an unspoken agreement not to tell Madame. Oswald was Melody's personal guard, after all, not her nanny.

"They put me in the space suit … it started to move by itself and, and I couldn't … stop it … there was someone, not the Doctor, someone _good_. The best man in all the world, and the suit was gonna make me … " Melody hated the way her voice shook, the way her nose ran. She was supposed to be stronger than this. She was a hero in the making. Madame Kovarian, the General and most of the other soldiers would have been disgusted. Oswald, however, only stroked her limp blond hair off her forehead with cool, gentle fingers. Melody leaned into the touch.

"Tell me a story?" she whispered.

Oswald's stories kept the nightmares away like nothing else, which was strange, considering how violent they could be: malicious women made of ice, living suns greedy enough to eat their planets, metal machines destroying everything in their path. Not unlike Madame's history lessons, actually. Unless the difference was that in Oswald's stories, everybody lived.

The older girl laughed, a weary sound in spite of its sweetness, reminding Melody that she had already spent hours keeping guard outside her young charge's door.

"I'm afraid I'm all out of stories, sweetie," she said. "I've told you all the ones I know."

"So repeat one," Melody insisted. "Or, I don't know. Make one up."

"You overestimate my imagination." Oswald's face scrunched up into a thoughtful frown, her head tilted to one side like a sparrow's. "Hmm … I think I've got one. It's … well, it's not exactly a nice story, though."

"Nice stories are boring," Melody declared.

Oswald smiled wryly. "I guess so."

"Is it scary? I like scary."

Oswald raised an eyebrow.

"When I'm awake, anyway."

"Yeah, who doesn't?"

She took Melody's tiny hand in hers, which despite her added age was not much larger, and settled down in her chair as comfortably as possible. "Once upon a time," she said, "There was a young girl who wanted nothing more than to see the stars."

"Like me?" Melody noted.

"You could say that," said Oswald, with a mysterious little smile. "In any case, her luck was a lot worse than I hope yours will be once you start travelling. You see, this girl's starship crashed on her first trip – and landed smack dab inside the Dalek Asylum."

Daleks! Melody shivered with anticipation. This was going to be good.

"Did they try to ex … ex-ter-mi-nate her?"

"Worse." A shadow passed over the soldier's pretty face, something that had nothing to do with being tired. "They tried to turn her into one of them."

"Can Daleks do that?"

"Oh yes they can." Her grip on Melody's hand became very tight. "It's true. Ask Madame. One of the Asylum's security features is something called a nanocloud. Basically, tiny robots that go after any living thing that lands on the planet and make it Dalek. Very efficient, really. That way, nobody can escape."

Melody, though young enough to be enjoyably frightened, was also old enough to appreciate the strategy. She nodded wisely to show that she understood, eager for the story to continue.

"It started with anger," said Oswald, a tight frown between her eyes. "At first, she didn't realize anything was wrong. If you'd crashlanded on a deserted planet with nothing but some stale emergency rations, no other survivors, not even any books or music to pass the time, you'd expect to get a little stir-crazy, wouldn't you?"

They shared a dry little chuckle at the idea of hyperactive Melody, who needed intense combat practice every day to tire her out enough to sleep, in that situation.

"But it didn't stop there. Her shipmates, her friends – all the others who died in the crash – they followed her out of the escape pod and onto the planet's surface. Dead, emotionless, with blue Dalek visors coming out of their foreheads, they followed her. She tried to run. She wasn't fast enough."

Melody's hearts skipped a beat.

"They put wires in her skin and circuits in her brain. They replaced her hands with a gunstick, her eyes with a visor, and welded armor all around her body. They hooked her up to the Dalek Pathweb, where she heard a million voices scream so loud, it nearly drowned her own thoughts out. If she'd been angry before, she was definitely angry now. Not to mention scared."

"What happened?" she asked eagerly, forming one of her little hands into a gun. "Did she get her revenge? Did she shoot them?"

That was what Melody would do. If any Dalek ever tried to hurt her, she would make it beg for mercy before it died.

"Better." Oswald took a deep breath and smiled once more, a smile twinkling with mischief, even pride. "She made soufflés."

"What's a soufflé?"

"A cake." Oswald giggled. "Made with lots of eggs. It's an ancient Terran recipe – and it's bloody tricky to make, let me tell you. If you're not careful, they collapse in the oven. Just like this." She blew air out of her puffed cheeks and made a floppy motion with her hand.

"Now you're being stupid," Melody informed her. "You can't fight the Daleks by _baking._"

"Oh, but you can." Oswald did not bat an eye at her charge's rudeness. "In fact, it's one of the best ways I know."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Well, the Daleks don't eat, do they?" she said simply. "So as long as this girl remembered how to bake a soufflé, she remembered she was human. As long as she played all her favorite music inside her mind – _Carmen_, _Swan Lake,_ 1960's rock songs – as long as she saw herself human, with a red dress and a flower in her hair – as long as she kept recording letters to her mother … she was still human. Armor, visor and all. And as long as she was still human, the Daleks couldn't win."

Something about these images touched Melody, in spite of herself. She could not help but wonder what _she_ would have to hold on to, in such a situation. What did she have to remind her of her humanity? Colonel Manton's stony face as he timed her dismantling, cleaning, and reassembling her gun? Madame's slithery voice as she told her stories about the monster she must destroy as soon as she was old enough?

Not that she would need such useless tactics, anyway, she told herself. Still … she did want to know how the story ended.

"Did she ever escape?" she asked.

"Depends on how you look at it." Oswald's smile became sad, and Melody already had the feeling that, for once, this story would not have a happy ending.

"One day, a man came to the Asylum," Oswald continued. "He was funny, clever, good-looking – in spite of a ridiculous bow tie, a tweed jacket, and a chin big enough to put someone's eye out! – and, most importantly, he was very brave. He heard the girl's distress call. He followed her voice, which she had modified over the comm system in order to sound like the young woman she was, instead of what she'd been turned into. They flirted over the comm; he called her Soufflé Girl, she called him Chin Boy. He promised to rescue her and show her the stars."

Melody had a bad feeling about this. She clutched the edges of the blanket, feeling more afraid, for some reason, than she had been by the Dalek conversion. She had seen pictures of a man like that. She could imagine him all too well.

"It was the Doctor, wasn't it?" she asked flatly.

"Maybe," Oswald replied. "But whoever it was, he was definitely on her side. He fought his way through all the Daleks between them – the insane ones, the uncontrollable ones, the ones that frightened even their own kind. They cornered him right in front of her door, guns in his face, yelling for him to be exterminated. And _then_ – guess what the girl did?"

"What? Oswald, _what_?"

"She hacked into the Pathweb and made them forget he was there."

"Genius." Melody grinned.

"I know!" Oswald grinned back, but became very sober soon afterwards as she continued her story.

"That's when he opened the door," she said quietly. "And he didn't see the woman he was expecting. He saw a Dalek, chained up in a white prison cell, and when she spoke, he heard a Dalek voice."

Melody's stomach lurched. This was the part of the story Oswald had warned her about; the part where the Doctor, who had no more heart than the Daleks and hated them as bitterly as they hated him, would do something terrible to the girl who was only hoping for rescue.

"What did he do to her?" she asked, resigned to the worst.

Oswald's hazel eyes were very bright. The look she gave Melody could almost have been pity.

"Nothing," she said.

"_Nothing?_"

"He put his hands on her armor, leaned his face into her visor, and reminded her – quietly, compassionately – of what she was. She'd forgotten, you see. She'd been dreaming for so long, she forgot the dream wasn't real."

Melody felt her own eyes welling up. She forgot that it was only a story; she forgot that she might not even remember it in the morning. She felt as if she _were_ that Dalek girl, and it hurt her more than she could have expected.

"For a moment – just a moment – she lost control. It all came rushing back to her – the screams, the wires, her dead shipmates, everything. She was so full of hate and fear and anger that the Dalek in her took over. She wheeled right up to the man in front of her, and she came _this_ close - " Oswald leaned down, her face within inches of Melody's. " – to killing him. Until she heard him call her name, over and over again, and saw the fear in his eyes. And she remembered who he was, who they were, who she _should_ have been … and lowered her gun."

Oswald's hand, which had been pointing steadily at Melody's chest, suddenly lowered into her lap. She looked down at it, almost embarrassed to have been so carried away, and tucked her other hand into her lap as well. Sitting there bolt upright, with her ankles crossed and her elbows tucked in, she could have passed for a Victorian governess in spite of her Cleric's uniform.

"Anyway," she continued calmly, "The thing to remember is that in the end, she let him go. And before he left, she did a master delete on all information pertaining to him. She made sure no Daleks would never go after him again."

"And then he left her," Melody accused. "After he _promised_ to rescue her! That's not fair!"

"No." Oswald shook her head, looking much older than her twenty-odd years. "She chose to stay. There's a difference. There would have been no way to turn her body back, and no one to accept her. She knew that. The important thing … the most important thing is that she didn't let hate control her. They tried to make her into a weapon, but she chose to help someone instead. And because she helped that man, he could go on to help others, and so on and on, until they made a long chain of kindness and courage from one end of the universe to the other. So, yes, you could say she died. But from a certain point of view, you could also say she'll live forever. What do you think, Melody?"

As she spoke, something like a sunrise came over Oswald's face. By the end of her story, she was positively glowing. It was a look Melody had never seen before, and she did not understand it. All she knew was that it made her want to cry.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she sobbed. "It doesn't make any sense!"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't – don't let Madame hear you," she pleaded, catching hold of Oswald's sleeve. "She'll send you away if she hears you talk like that. I don't want you to go!"

"I won't breathe a word," Oswald promised. "Cross my heart. And about my story, well … you might understand it when you're older. I hope so."

She stood up from her chair, tucked Melody into her blankets and kissed her softly on the forehead. Melody stared up at her, bewildered.

"What was that for?"

"Does there have to be a reason?"

Just as the guard turned to leave, one foot already across the sensor line that allowed the door to open, Melody had the impulse to ask one more of her many questions. Perhaps it was the darkness she had sensed behind the older girl's playful smile; perhaps a foreboding that Madame might hear about her heresy after all.

"Do _you_ have bad dreams, Oswald?"

"Sometimes," she said, with a too-casual shrug. "Why?"

"Is there anyone to tell _you_ stories?"

"Oh, bless you, Melody." For reasons that, once again, were beyond her understand, Oswald's eyes seemed to melt like chocolates in the sun. "I tell myself stories all the time. I'm all right, really. Thanks for asking."

She left, the door sliding shut behind her, leaving nothing but a faint smell of soap and the memory of warmth. Melody ordered the lights off and settled back into her pillow, staring open-eyed at the dark ceiling. She tried to wrap her head around the image of the Doctor, putting his hands on a Dalek's armor and speaking to it with compassion. Oswald's crazy imagination had really run away with her this time.

Soufflés. Impossible.

If the Daleks ever tried to convert her, she had the sneaking suspicion that Oswald's stories would become what she thought about. And with that thought in mind, Melody Pond drifted off, for once, into a dreamless and refreshing sleep.


End file.
